


No. 1 Let's Hang Out Sometime (Gwen)

by Onehelluvapilot



Series: Whumptober 2020 [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, Gen, Hurt Gwen (Merlin), Merlin to the rescue, Protective Elyan (Merlin), Protective Lancelot (Merlin), Restraints, suffocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26779192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onehelluvapilot/pseuds/Onehelluvapilot
Summary: Gwen and the other Hunters of the Round Table have been captured by wraiths and hung up in a meat locker. Gwen, the shortest out of any of them, can't reach the ground and is struggling to breathe.
Relationships: Elyan & Gwen (Merlin), Gwen & Lancelot (Merlin)
Series: Whumptober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952440
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	No. 1 Let's Hang Out Sometime (Gwen)

**Author's Note:**

> I made two versions of No. 1 Let's Hang Out Sometime, because I was being insecure and indecisive. If you don't like female whump (which is totally understandable, I'm not a huge fan of it myself) feel free to skip this one. The next chapter is about Gwaine instead and focuses on the same prompt.

“Well, this is not good,” Gwaine said matter-of-factly upon waking up to find himself dangling by the wrists in what appeared to be a meat locker.

“Oh really?” Arthur asked, voice dripping with sarcasm, from where he hung not far away. “I was under the impression that this was, in fact, a lovely vacation spot but now that you mention it, I think you may be onto something. IT MIGHT BE A BAD THING THAT WE’VE BEEN KIDNAPPED AND LOCKED IN A MEAT LOCKER BY WRAITHS.” Gwaine (and most of the others) glared at him for the noise. Looking around, the most recently woken hunter saw all the others except for Merlin. Percival seemed to have it easiest, as he could stand with his feet easily on the ground, whereas all the other men had to strain to stand on tiptoe to take some of the pressure off their shoulders. Gwaine knew that they had at most a couple of hours until they lost the strength to stand on tiptoe and were forced to put all of their weight into their arms. From that point, not only would their odds of escape decrease exponentially as their strength left them and their shoulders dislocated, but they’d suffocate. Hanging from one’s arms made it nearly impossible to breathe deeply, which was how crucifixion killed.

Gwaine realized with a creeping sense of horror that they didn’t have hours to develop an escape plan, they had minutes. Gwen, who was shorter than all the male hunters, was already struggling to breathe as her feet dangled six inches off the ground. He watched as she clenched her fists and pulled herself up briefly, just long enough to suck in a lungfull of frosty air before collapsing back down. Her strong arm muscles, well-toned from working in her supernatural weapons forge, might give her a small advantage, but it wouldn’t be long until she lost the strength to pull herself up anyway. Elyan was watching her worriedly, and Lancelot, who was nearest to her, seemed to be in danger of dislocating his shoulder in an effort to reach a step stool on the ground that he might be able to kick over to her.

“Where’s…” Gwaine asked, catching himself before he said Merlin. The wraiths might have heard Arthur’s shouting and could be listening in, and if they were, he didn’t want to let them know that they had missed one of them.

“We don’t know,” Leon replied with a shake of his head. “Not here, at any rate.”

“Merlin will come for us,” Arthur said, because of course the man had no idea that he should be careful about what information he might be giving their captors. He might’ve been raised as the last Man of Letters but sometimes his lack of common sense in the field became painfully apparent. “He may not be the most competent hunter sometimes, but he’s loyal, and he always seems to get us out of messes.”

“Well he better do it soon,” Elyan said sharply, looking over at his sister. All of their breath was visible in the cold air, and it wasn’t hard to see that Gwen was forming a much smaller cloud in front of her face with each exhale than the rest of them.

“Short of a rescue, and I’m not saying it won’t happen, we should try to come up with a plan ourselves,” Gwaine said, scanning the room. Out of them, he probably had the most experience escaping from places. After all, most of his teenage years had been focused around orchestrating ever more elaborate escapes from foster homes and juvenile delinquency centers. In all of those scenarios, though, he had been able to move around instead of being trussed up. And he’d never had as pressing a time limit, or such dire consequences for failure.

They weren’t handcuffed, he noticed, but rather bound up with rope looped over a meat hook. That was an advantage. He also noted that it could have been a lot worse, and at least they didn’t have the meat hooks embedded in their limbs like the dead pigs that hung on all sides of them.

“Percival, if you jumped, do you think you could get the rope off the hook?” Gwaine suggested. The big hunter was the only one out of them that had both feet on the ground to be able to jump. Percy didn’t reply, just tried it. He failed, weight coming back down onto the hook with a grunt as the air was forced out of his chest. The problem was easy to see after he tried it; since he couldn’t bend his knees much, all of the power for the jump had to come from his ankles instead of his thighs, which wasn’t enough to get him very high. Gwaine winced. “Shit. Well, keep trying. You might be able to fray the rope enough to break it if you keep jolting it. Or you could try moving them back and forth?" He suggested.

"What about the rest of us?" Leon asked.

"I don't know? You can try to do the same. Or maybe, since you and Arthur are closer together, you could try to kick him off the hook?" The leader of their group looked unsure about this proposition, but after a glance over at Gwen, he nodded. Leon let his weight hang into his hands briefly, and tried to swing and kick upwards. His feet didn’t quite make it all the way up to Arthur’s hands, and instead he ended up kicking him in the back. “Lance, keep doing what you’re doing,” Gwaine said, ignoring the other two men. The hunter was only an inch or two away from being able to hook a toe around one of the legs of the step stool, which had probably been left there after the wraiths used it to hang them up. 

“Lance-” Gwen whimpered.

“It’s okay, we’re going to get you down,” he promised, a fierce look of determination in his eye. “Just hold on a little longer, okay? I’m going to try to dislocate my shoulder and then I’ll be able to reach it.”

“Well don’t do  _ that _ ,” another voice said, and everyone turned to look as well as they were able towards a tiny grate in the back. A familiar face was visible through it.

“Merlin!” Arthur shouted happily, before quickly being shushed by the rescuing hunter.

“You clotpole, when will you learn?” he muttered. “Listen, I can’t get through here, but I’ll go around and get you out. Shouldn’t take more than ten minutes.”

“Gwen doesn’t have ten minutes,” Elyan growled at him. Merlin smiled, and if the girl’s brother could have reached him, he would have punched him.

“I think Lance has got her covered,” he said, just as there was a scraping noise of plastic on the concrete floor.

“Got it!” the hunter in question announced enthusiastically. With his toes, he pulled the stepstool over to him, and then kicked it very carefully over to Gwen. She stepped up onto it, her breathing immediately easing, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Except Merlin, whose sigh sounded more exasperated.

“Lance, you know you could have stepped up onto the stool and gotten yourself down and then helped Gwen, right?” he pointed out. Lancelot smiled sheepishly, but the way he was looking at the female hunter said he wasn’t really that sorry. “And then gotten all of you down. Now you’re stuck up there until I can get around and rescue you.”

“Better hurry then,” Gwaine said, cheeky smile on his face.


End file.
